Dining Profiles

Max Brenner never wanted to be a modern-day Willy Wonka, and he credits his rise to chocolate superstardom to pure “coincidence.”

“I actually wanted to write,” says the Israeli-born king of cocoa, who now calls New York City home. “Writing was all a part of a scene of the Bohemian guy, sitting in coffee shops in Paris, working and writing and all this. And that’s what I did, and that’s what I liked.”

After completing Israel’s mandatory three-year term of military service, Brenner enrolled in what he thought was the easiest government-sponsored class—pastry-making—in hopes of focusing on his true passion. His path took him to Paris, where he continued his pastry training while living the writer’s dream. But the dream was short-lived.

In 1999, the brother and sister team of Wes and Laurie Kendrick opened a small restaurant in an office park along Warm Springs Road. Within months, thanks to Wes’ new-American cooking and Laurie’s management and charm, Wild Sage Café became one of the Valley’s hottest lunch spots. In fact, it became so popular that they decided to open a second restaurant in The Lakes neighborhood. It was the classic restaurant gamble, and it left the Kendricks overextended. The new restaurant folded, and in 2003, it took the original Wild Sage down with it.

Long before Akira Back became executive chef at Yellowtail Japanese Restaurant and Lounge, his home was in Aspen, Colo., where he was a professional snowboarder as a teenager and had blue hair. After a snowboarding injury, he said he had two career choices: follow in his father’s footsteps and take over his business, or do something else.

It was 1968 and like so many young men at that time Ladeki was drafted to serve in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. Unwilling to give up his U.S. visa and return to Lebanon, Ladeki spent two years working in an Army mess hall. “It was scary,” Ladeki says. “Looking back now, it was the best experience I’ve had in my life.”